Dispatch’s release on Nintendo platforms today was poised to be another testament to AdHoc’s tremendous success with the point-and-click superhero workplace comedy, but news of a platform-specific difference has overshadowed much of the excitement for fans hoping to play the episodic series on-the-go. Instead of celebrating the release, fans are launching campaigns against Dispatch’s censorship, returning their purchases, or refraining from playing it altogether.
Normally, Dispatch contains nudity and sexually explicit scenes involving its gang of ex-villains. AdHoc allows players to toggle sexual content like this off on most platforms. Curiously, however, the newly-released Switch version automatically depicts censored versions of these scenes. There’s no option to turn the setting off.
AdHoc confirmed the censorship to Eurogamer, but noted that the overall experience would still be the same for Switch players.
Mind you, Nintendo is cool with putting Doom and Duke Nukem on the Switch.
The fact that they allow Resident Evil Village of all games on the Switch but don’t allow this animated nudity scene is insane to me. RE Village was one of the most graphic games I have ever seen.
edit: I Just realized Cyberpunk 2077 was released on it no censorship. How did dispatch get censored but that was allowed through lmao
It looks like CERO might be responsible.
CERO is very strict about genitals and dismemberment. CD Projekt Red got around that by having two different versions of Cyberpunk 2077; the version sold on the Japanese eShop is censored so as to comply with CERO, while the European one isn’t.
AdHoc doesn’t have the same resources as CD Projekt Red, so they might have just made the one version which they sell everywhere.
It’s still surprising that Sony is apparently being more lenient than Nintendo for once.
To be fair, the only real memory I have of the OG God of War games is that the first or second game opens up with Kratos motorboating two girls’ titties. And that was in a time when nudity in mainstream games was still nearly unheard of.
Unless you wanted some…hot coffee.
That whole controversy was blown out of proportion. Not only because it could only be accessed by hacking the game apart, but also because it didn’t actually have any explicit content. It was still fully clothed models just animated to hump each other.
As a horny teen, that shit was the most disappointed in a rumored game secret I had been since being told if you beat Metroid fast enough you can see Samus nude.
Unconfirmed, but the rumor I’m hearing is that AdHoc submitted one universal binary for all regions, and it’s CERO who won’t allow this content in Japan. FWIW, the JP version of Cyberpunk is also censored, but it’s separate from the international release.
It’s also worth noting that the JP PS5 version just launched alongside it, separate from last year’s international version. Haven’t been able to find confirmation on whether that version is censored too, but if it is then it’s definitely CERO.
I think this is very likely the reason yea.
I’m also now finding out that they had to censor the coverart of the switch 2 edition a few weeks ago as well which I was unaware of. If it turns out they knew for awhile that it would be censored, and just chose not to tell anyone that is going to permanently damper my opinion of their studio. Like it’s one thing to be like “This was forced upon us last minute so we threw a solution together” it’s a whole different situation of knowing that it was going to happen, then refusing to tell the consumers about it since you knew it would lower sales.
It sounds to me like they knew this change was going to be required at that point, but didn’t want to publicly announce that, which puts a pretty bad taste in my mouth about the intent of the studio.